Ventilation by pairs of men using Bedsheet Fans is an effective method for forcing very large volumes of outdoor air through tunnels, corridors and mines with ceilings at least 9 feet high - provided they have two large openings. Because of the worldwide extreme fear of radiation, civil defense specialists who prepare official self-help instructions for building shelters have made radiation protection their overriding objective. ° Keep pumping about 40 cfm of air per person through the shelter both day and night during hot weather, so that the occupants and the shelter itself will be cooled off at night. Vibrate the concrete throughout the pour to eliminate voids and air bubbles. The prescriptive plans for safe rooms provided in FEMA P-320 are not intended to be a substitute for a licensed design professional. Ventilation is another design element you shouldn’t overlook. In contrast, in 1981 I gave copies of instructions for both KAPs and Directional Fans to Dr. Yin Zhi-shu, the Director of the People's Republic of China's National Research and Design Institute of Civil Defense - and the next day he started evaluating these simple devices. Thus with one fan 1,000 cubic feet per minute can he pumped through a fully occupied shelter. As proved by habitability tests in Florida and elsewhere, a KAP or Directional Fan must be used, even with two crawlway entry/exits. At one end was a combined crawlway entrance/air intake opening, at the other end, a 1-foot-square air exhaust opening. 6.4. Unless most of the occupants body heat and water vapor from sweat are removed by air circulated through a typical shelter, the heat-humidity conditions will become increasingly dangerous in warm or hot weather. Smooth the concrete on top of the storm shelter with a steel float. In such shelters, more than 40 cfm of outdoor air per occupant must be supplied. Thanks to Congressman Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri and strong civil defense advocate, in 1981 I was able to demonstrate Directional Fanning to Louis Giuffrida, at that time the Director of FEMA. This will help eliminate any water or debri from getting inside. 6.2. To keep loose shielding earth from running under the car and into the trench, the upper edges of 5-foot-wide strips of polyethylene film first were attached with duct tape to the sides and ends of the car, about 2 feet above the ground. Hold the fan like a golf club and swing it with your arms extended. I have experienced this reluctance even during wartime, when trying to improve faulty combat equipment that was causing American soldiers to lose their lives. It is structurally built to bear wind loads in excess of 250 mph or an EF5 tornado. Figure 6.5 is a Russian drawing (with its caption translated) of a "Wood - Earth Shelter" in a Soviet self-help civil defense booklet, "Anti-Radiation Shelters in Rural Areas." Dr. Yin, who heads all Chinese civil defense research and development, went with his top ventilation and shelter design specialists to a furniture factory in Beijing. Some shelters will become dangerously hot in a few hours. 2), 3) After a slight pause, leisurely withdraw the almost horizontal fan until the bottom of its blade almost touches your stomach -- preparatory to the next power stroke. Once any bureaucracy issues dangerously faulty equipment or instructions, it rarely corrects them except under pressure. A pair of pre-mechanization coal miners produced a directed airflow' by holding apiece of canvas vertically between them while they quickly walked a short ways in the direction of the desired airflow; they walked back with the canvas held horizontally between them. Or use a single round stick about 1-1/4 inches in diameter, flattened on one side. And in hot weather, when as much as 40 cfm per occupant is required, body-warmed shelter air is no lighter than the outdoor air. An official website of the United States government. If you are thinking of getting a tornado shelter installed, or already have one, storage is a very important part of your shelter. Methods for ventilating with homemade devices and for keeping ventilating air from carrying fallout particles into shelters are described in Appendices A and B. However, if you do not know if you live in a flood plane, upon going to pull a permit through your city, they should inform you wheter you are or not. The board was nailed to roof poles of the narrow entry trench extending behind the girl in the photograph. The most dangerous level is the Winter Storm Warning. Now, we will give you some tips for storm shelter storage ideas. If time and/or materials are very limited, make a fan with its blade merely a piece of cloth connecting two 22-inch-long sticks. A storm shelter by itself is a great resource to have to hide form storms but it can be so much more, it can be also be a store house for the materials you’ll need to recover from the aftermath of the storm. In the Navy test, the ventilation rate of 7 to 12 cfm was not high enough to give occupants the partial relief from heat and sweating that people normally get at night.15 In a National Academy of Sciences meeting on protective shelters, an authority stated: "Laboratory experiments and field investigations have shown that healthy persons at rest can tolerate daily exposures to ETs [effective temperatures] up to 900 F, provided they can get a good night's sleep in a cooler environment. You might be surprised to know you can get federal assistance to build a storm shelter or safe room in your home if you know where to look. With many more pairs of Bedsheet Fanners working, enough air for at least 10,000 occupants could be "sucked" into this mine through one of its 17 x 20-foot portals, fanned down a corridor to the far "dead end" of the mine, then fanned through across corridor, and finally fanned back out through the corridor that has the second truck-sized portal at its outer end. Breathing tiny radioactive particles into one's lungs would constitute a minor health hazard compared to other dangers that would afflict an unprepared people subjected to a large scale nuclear attack. Each fanner should grip his stick with one hand near its "downwind" end and with his other hand near its center. The most practical design tested was made from a strong double bedsheet cut down to 6-foot width, with the wide hem at its head-end left unchanged and with a similar- sized hem sewn in its opposite end, to give a finished length of 6 feet. The reader is advised not to read this section if pressed for time during a crisis, unless he is considering building an expedient or permanent shelter described in an official civil defense publication. For maximum ventilation rate, fan about 40 strokes per minute. Then, if a need arises to stop or restrict ventilation, the shelter can be closed for longer than could be done safely otherwise. We recently wrote about what to keep in your storm shelter. In contrast, tests with average citizens have indicated that if they have instructions for making and using Directional Fans and if there are a few hours of warning time before the attack, then the majority will be able to ventilate all of their expedient shelters, except some of the largest. By using one or more additional, smaller KAPs (also described in Appendix B), fresh air can be distributed easily throughout large shelter rooms, and the occupants will be gently fanned. It must be remembered that shelters may have to be occupied continuously for days in warm or hot weather. A. DIRECTIONAL FANNING TO VENTILATE AND COOL SMALLER SHELTERS. If you live in a tornado-prone area, you’ll love this post. If you do not have strong string, use 1/2 inch-wide strips of bedsheet cloth, or other strong cloth, slightly twisted. ° Distribute the air quite evenly throughout the shelter. In 1980, Dr. William Olsen, a NASA research engineer long concerned with improving self- help civil defense, rediscovered one kind of Directional Fanning. Also, if during the time of maximum fallout dose rate the occupants get close together in the most protective part of the shelter, they often will get unbearably hot unless fanned. The entering cool air continuously. If you wait until the storm is upon you, you will be exposed to wind, hail, rain, lightning and maybe even flying debris as you try to get to your shelter. ... Breathe. ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Environmental & Historic Preservation Guidance, Work With the National Flood Insurance Program, Voluntary & Community-Based Organizations, Environmental Planning & Historic Preservation, National Business Emergency Operations Center, ICC 500, Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters. Whenever practical, directionally fan the air in the same direction that the air is naturally flowing through the shelter. Finally, earth was piled against the vertical parts of the attached film strips. Pulling a Small. To strengthen the corners, overlap the sticks about one-half inch, as shown. Here is a list of things to store in your storm shelter now, so that you are prepared for when an unexpected storm comes. With the car being parked over the storm shelter, this helps acts as a shield. This is enough outdoor air - if it is properly distributed within the shelter - to maintain tolerable conditions for weeks for 25 occupants during extremely hot weather, and for up to about 300 occupants during cold weather. A 6-foot-long, nominal 1 x 2-inch board (or an approximately 1-1/2 inch diameter stick) was secured inside each end hem of various models with waterproof construction adhesive, or with tacks, or by tying. Then they repeated. 2. 3. A lock ( Can you install on post tension cables? See Fig. (There are exceptions to this ventilation requirement when the ceiling or walls of basement or aboveground shelters in buildings are heated by the sun to levels higher than skin temperature. Although FEMA P-320 and P-361 present FEMA’s guidance on the design and construction of safe rooms, FEMA does not verify or certify design calculations or products. However, this method requires organization and discipline. The sections on the small 2-handled Directional Fan and the large 1-Man Fan will be the most useful to unprepared people. To adequately ventilate and cool people crowded into a long tunnel in hot weather, a pair of Bedsheet Fanners should be positioned about every 100 feet along its length. All Concrete Storm Shelters have a 10 Year Warranty against leaks and corrosion. So the contractor concluded in his 1978 report to FEMA that the second entry/exit should be eliminated because "The building of entries is time consuming and with this small a shelter a second entry is really not justified.". Thus, stopping in a storm shelter not only gives you some time to rest, you can also stay dry in the process and take on calories. ° Headaches from the carbon monoxide produced by smoking. However, anything "leeward" (shielding you from the direction of the wind) of the storm will be better than nothing. If no sticks are available, a double thickness of heavy, stiff cardboard 22 inches long by 14 inches wide will pump almost as much air if used as a handleless fan. The practicality of using Bedsheet Fans to ventilate some very large mines or caves having 2 or more large openings was proved by tests with members of the Citizens Preparedness Group of Greater Kansas City. Basic safe room information and construction drawings for site-built safe rooms are provided in FEMA P-320, Taking Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Room for Your Home or Small Business FEMA’s safe room guidance also references criteria in ICC 500, Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters . As part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's participation in Defense Nuclear Agency's "Dice Throw" 1978 blast test, I built two Russian Pole- Covered Trench Shelters. Check them out below: It's a win situation all round, and the combination of which will keep you that much safer for the remainder of the day. A durable but laboriously heavy fan can be made in a few' minutes using a 20 x 30-inch piece of 1/4 inch plywood nailed to a single 46-inch-long. These jungle methods include the first five of the six cooling methods listed in this section. This publication has all of the details you will need on how to build your own tornado shelter in your area. Some people who are experienced at building things will find these instructions unnecessarily long and detailed. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Contractors, individuals, or firms shall not claim they or their products are "FEMA approved" or "FEMA certified.". Maintaining a storm shelter in preparation for a natural disaster may seem a bit alarmist to some, but if you have ever lived through a tornado, earthquake or tsunami, you understand the need for preparation. x 16 in. Yet even in this improved edition no mention is made of the crucial need for forced ventilation during warm weather, nor for expedient, simple means for providing pumped air. 4. The resultant "hot spots" of fallout heavy enough to kill unsheltered people in a few weeks could be scattered even hundreds of miles downwind from areas of multiple explosions, especially missile fields. I regret that no one rediscovered this premechanization, simple, yet effective way of manually pumping air until after the original Nuclear War Survival Skills was published. Stick-Frame KAP to Keep Temperatures Endurable for Occupants of a Car- Over-Trench Shelter in Warm Weather. While working in jungles from the Amazon to Burma, I observed the methods used by the natives to avoid unhealthful conditions like those experienced in the Navy shelter, which was ventilated in a conventional American manner. 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